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Back-to-School Letter to the US Congress

Sep 3, 2012Mohamed A. El-Erian
What if members of the US Congress, now returning from their summer recess, were to receive a “back to school” memorandum from concerned citizens? At a minimum, it should call on Congress and the president to converge on a multi-prong, multi-year policy initiative that makes simultaneous advances in six critical areas.

NEWPORT BEACH – What if members of the United States Congress, now returning from their summer recess, were to receive a “back to school” letter from concerned citizens? Here is what a first draft might look like.

Dear Member of Congress:

Welcome back to the Capitol. We hope that you had a good summer break, and that you return to Washington not just rested, but also energized to take on our country’s mounting economic challenges.

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Mohamed A. El-Erian, Chief Economic Adviser at Allianz, the corporate parent of PIMCO where he served as CEO and co-Chief Investment Officer, was Chairman of US President Barack Obama’s Global Development Council. He previously served as CEO of the Harvard Management Company and Deputy Director at the International Monetary Fund. He was named one of Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012. He is the author, most recently, of The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse.

I would like to offer my own brief analysis of our political and economic problems: unbridled GREED by those for whom no amount of wealth is ever enough; the legalized bribery of politicians leading to legislation favoring the richest, thus deeply CORRUPTING the political process; the alignment of Tea Party Republicans with this agenda; the long-term redistribution of wealth from the shrinking middle class to the very richest Americans; a President without moral conviction, passion or courage, unwilling to forcefully confront and call out the innumerable falsehoods by his opponents -- and who was woefully inexperienced and unprepared to lead this country, and who acts as if the Presidency is a country club.

While I admire the goals of your site and your honesty in trying to not only point out the obvious problems, but also offer solutions, there is an underlying premise here that is simply not true.

The premise is that there are tough times, etc but we have always managed to survive and move on. This premise has held in the past now, but does not apply know. Why because the type of problems which I will not belabor you with here are borderline insurmountable and even if Congress wanted too they could not solve them and put the country back on some kind of stable course, without major consequences to the quality of life for Americans.

The problem today is not the work ethic or the spirit that made America what it, it is the incredible polarization and divisiveness that has infested every corner of our society. As many have said, democracy is messy, and every one doesnt always get their way, but the key to a successful democracy is compromise for the greater good. There is NO compromise anywhere anymore. So until this attitude is changed all the ideas and solutions for the betterment of mankind that you propose have NO chance of being implemented.

So I believe that unless this current attitude changes, the the new year 2013 will be seen in history as the beginning of the downfall of the up until now the greatest nation that has ever evolved on the planet earth.

May I modestly point out, the quality of Congress will only be as good as the quality of the voters who put them into office. I do not believe the voters are capable of living with representatives who, through program cuts and higher tax rates, put the fiscal house back in order. BOTH parties, upon the alter of electoral success, have offered the voters what they say they want, a free lunch. Any economist of any stripe will quickly state, there is no such thing.

I would pick this short part of the letter:
"...And, despite all the happy talk, multilateral policy coordination is essentially non-existent.
All of this calls for courageous and visionary economic leadership; otherwise, our problems will fester and grow, and the solutions will become even more complex..."
Or more precisely the following words: multilateral, coordination, and visionary.
And this is exactly what the present political class does not have.
What they have is personal legacy, party politics and subjective, inward vision. To be fair this is not an American disease but a global one.
The rest of the suggestions all fall because there is nobody who would be capable of seeing the whole, interconnected, global system in totality above personal or national interests, and thus all solutions present fail.
In the integral, interdependent system we evolved into, our present attitude, methods and tools have become obsolete.
We need a completely new leadership, capable of playing team sport for the benefit of the whole, both internally and externally, globally, leaders that are transparent, truly serving their people without self interest.
In this respect this coming "school term" and the elections are totally irrelevant, the people on show will not be able to change, they grew up in a system, in a previous "school" which has nothing to teach us any longer.
We need a new school with new students.